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Derby flat out don't allow it. I didn't ask in notts or Leicester but they were so small there was little point in asking. Maybe they'd have let us play a 750 point battle on those 4 by 4 tables, maybe they wouldn't. Either way it's no great loss. I don't want to restrict my gaming to a small point battle on a tiny table with kids and neckbeards breathing down my neck.

 BryllCream wrote:
Derby flat out don't allow it. I didn't ask in notts or Leicester but they were so small there was little point in asking. Maybe they'd have let us play a 750 point battle on those 4 by 4 tables, maybe they wouldn't. Either way it's no great loss. I don't want to restrict my gaming to a small point battle on a tiny table with kids and neckbeards breathing down my neck.

Point taken. Especially re Derby - it's hard to find out exactly which stores have discontinued gaming as there's so many "friend of a friend" anecdotes. But it's worth noting that the presence of neckbeards and kids isn't necessarily down to a GW policy change. Though I certainly admit that our FLGS, Dark Sphere, does seem to have a higher proportion of gamers with conventional civilised social graces than the typical GW.

 BryllCream wrote:

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

Rle68 wrote:
with GW abandoning the gaming aspect of the fact they are a game company i dont feel i owe them anything.

They're not. The gaming aspect of the hobby being done in stores is a very American thing. The rest of the world primarily does it at home or in organised clubs. They're just applying their attitude in the rest of the world to the American playerbase.

Well no... it's a very British thing, too. From recent sampling, majority of British stores have some or even lots of gaming.

I've visited the games workshops in Derby, Leicester and Nottingham, and none of them have allowed casual gaming. So I guess no one in the east Midlands plays 40k?

I bet they all used to until quite recently, even if they were tiny stores.

True that in the UK the majority of gaming appears to be happening at home or clubs, but I think that's only down to lack of space in most stores. There are 2 spacious stores I know (1 GW, one Independent) and the gaming tables for both are usually pretty busy, the rest are too small for non-demo gaming.

The fact that small independent gaming centres seem to be appearing (none particularly convenient for me, alas) seems to fly in the face of GW's behaviour.

Putney allowed booked games from what I could overhear when I last walked past.

Ouze wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
We're expecting Chicago to shut its doors in October.

This strikes me as no great loss.

It is certainly less of a loss than a couple of years ago. Still, you have to realize what happened in Chicago over the last decade or so. GW moved in, and spammed the area with stores. At one point, I think we had ten in the Chicago metro area. Their trade practices started freezing out independents, likely to drive traffic to their own stores. Independent game stores stopped getting new product at release, had shortages, while the GW stores were stocked and manned, and had several tables each for gaming.

Unsurprisingly, most of the local wargaming shops folded. Games Plus remained open, but it's in a significantly far northern suburb. But this wasn't seen as a huge deal, as the Bunker went out of its way to support veteran gaming. They bought a second store, adjoined to the first, that was nothing but tables for running tournaments. The bunker provided prize support for no-fee tournaments, and gave space to the local groups, like AWC, to run their tournaments there too.

So, while the loss of the Chicago Bunker will not be missed as a retail establishment, it has become the place where wargamers can go and play pickup games, and where tournaments can be held. If they shut down, there are not a lot of local stores (and certainly not local to all of Chicagoland - the Bunker enjoyed a fairly central location) to pick up that slack. That's what will be missed.

Your other analysis of the situation there is largely true, although you must have been there during the transition from the old space to the new space. It's not as bad now as you encountered, but it isn't a lot better. There are still a lot of stock shortages, but this is because they switched from human inventory management to computerized inventory management.

 Redbeard wrote:
Unsurprisingly, most of the local wargaming shops folded.

This is the first cause and effect like this on a regional scale in the USA I'm reading about where the GW local store killing FLGS worked. Were Chicago based game stores that poorly managed/owned?

GW tried spamming way back in the early 90s in Northern VA and wow did that backfire on them. Yes, some stores have closed but others have opened. The successful ones DO NOT RELY on GW sales in any percentage that loosing it would kill the business. Most of the game stores in the area seem content to "wait out" the current trade sales lack of support for independents mostly with those independents stocking stuff that sells to their customers like cards, comics, other games like Warmachine, Flames of War, Dark "something", Saga, whatever they want to focus on.

Any game store that relies on selling GW product to keep their doors open is bound to fail at some point. It doesn't take a GW store close by for that to happen either.

 Redbeard wrote:
[So, while the loss of the Chicago Bunker will not be missed as a retail establishment, it has become the place where wargamers can go and play pickup games, and where tournaments can be held. If they shut down, there are not a lot of local stores (and certainly not local to all of Chicagoland - the Bunker enjoyed a fairly central location) to pick up that slack. That's what will be missed.

Your other analysis of the situation there is largely true, although you must have been there during the transition from the old space to the new space. It's not as bad now as you encountered, but it isn't a lot better. There are still a lot of stock shortages, but this is because they switched from human inventory management to computerized inventory management.

My meaning in that "no great loss" was that the loss had, at the time I went, appeared to have already happened in how diminished it was from how great it was on my first trip. Losing a place to play always sucks bad though.

So far as the second thing you said here about the transition - man that would explain a lot. When I say it was bare, I mean like "unfinished, is this place open?" bare for the rear 3/4ths of the store.

GW has shot itself in the foot. What battle bunkers and its larger stores represent is one of their biggest advantages. They are that last vestiges of GWs formal support of a hobby community. They are only going to marginalized their brand this way, but I think they've been doing that for a while. Many companies that just manufacture and have a website would kill to be GW to have outlets and focal points for their hobby communities... but at this point it seems clear GW wants to get rid of that thing many would envy for marketting and just be a manufacturer with

It's like Lego stores, there is zero need for those stores from the stand point of generating a sales outlet... but they give enthusiasts a mini-Mecca and raise an awareness of the fandom.

My theory:

GW is desperately trying to shrink the company as fast as customer numbers and sales sink, shrinking every part of the infrastructure except central bureaucracy and high management. The latter is mandatory to let business reports look well enough to cover up shrinking sales volume. Esp. now that doubling essential prices are needed to compensate for halved sales. Tom Kirby hopes that he still makes it into retirement with 1 Mio GBP per year, before the downward spiral hits the ground. He can't spare any money for repairing and reviving the company.

The tabletop market is growing, GW is shrinking. So they don't outperform the market.

 Redbeard wrote:

Breotan wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
Chicago was making money, when they were operating under a very different business model. I have no idea if they are now.

According to the former Seattle bunker manager, none of the bunkers are profitable even when they were showing growth. I expect the decision to close the bunkers involves closing the least profitable ones first.

This is not what I heard. I was told that the ordering of the closings is simply due to when their leases expire. They're simply not renewing the leases on those spaces. We're expecting Chicago to shut its doors in October.

I also heard that rumor but the Seattle Bunker's lease isn't up for at least another year or more so that isn't the reason they're downsizing.

 Kroothawk wrote:
My theory:

GW is desperately trying to shrink the company as fast as customer numbers and sales sink, shrinking every part of the infrastructure except central bureaucracy and high management. The latter is mandatory to let business reports look well enough to cover up shrinking sales volume. Esp. now that doubling essential prices are needed to compensate for halved sales. Tom Kirby hopes that he still makes it into retirement with 1 Mio GBP per year, before the downward spiral hits the ground. He can't spare any money for repairing and reviving the company.

The tabletop market is growing, GW is shrinking. So they don't outperform the market.

I find it hard to disagree with your assessment.

GW doesn't make much money from people playing in their stores with models they already own and buying things like paint incidentally because they wish to support their store. GW makes money when you buy models. Therefor, from a business standpoint it makes a lot of sense to reduce their stores to simple point-of-sale areas, and cease providing a place to actually play with their models.

It seems counter-intuitive, but it's probably a smart decision if you figure that once people are done buying their armies up, they are no longer really customers who can be marketed to or drummed up for additional sales unless they get the itch to start a new army.

Making things that are popular available only from direct order or GW stores is an interesting tactic, and one that will probably advantage them in the long run - if you can't get it anywhere else and it's a good model, you're going to buy it from them because you have no other choice except quit the hobby petulantly, having spent a good deal of money on it already. So long as this tactic doesn't devolve into a situation of 'the most potent models in the game are only available from us and they are really expensive', it probably won't come back to bite them.

I'm not sure on the direct sales being a good thing. When I last asked for a new figure at GW and found it was direct only, I didn't want to have to go back to the shop after a week, or pay postage to have it delivered to my house. I never bought it. If a company won't stock their own stuff in their own stores... what's the point?

My local GW stopped Thursday veteran nights ages ago. Since then I found a cool local-ish gaming club, bought and learnt to play alternative games such as Dust Tactics and now currently learning how to play 2nd edition 40k. I thank GW for shooting themselves in the foot, if they hadn't I wouldn't of found out about all of the awesome games outside of the current edition of 40k and fantasy.

 Ouze wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
We're expecting Chicago to shut its doors in October.

This strikes me as no great loss.

I've only been to an actual GWS store twice; as there isn't one within 100 miles of me. Both trips were to the Chicago bunker.

The first time I went was about 3 years ago, and it was to the Chicago bunker while on my way to somewhere else. I thought it was amazing. There were all these incredible tables everywhere, and display cabinets all over the place. So many awesome miniatures to see, merchandise was everywhere. They had painting stations here and there, and had some WIP models up. They had some (but not all) Forge World stuff. The staff was friendly and outgoing - I got a lot of "so what army do you play" type conversation starters, but it wasn't so much as to be off-putting (and I expected that from previous posters here) I had a very limited budget as I needed my money for the actual destination of my trip, and still wound up spending around $200 because it was just so awesome seeing all this stuff.

The second time was about a year ago, when we decided to go to IKEA to get some display cases for my warhams. In this case, the situation was much, much different: I had plenty of money to spend on Warhams and this was in fact, half the point of the trip.

When I got to the store, they had essentially stripped it, it looked like it was the friday of a week long going out of business sale. 3/4ths of the store was empty, and what remained was crammed into the forward quarter. All the display cases were gone. The tables had been replaced with unpainted ROBB boards with a few unpainted ruins on each, and there were only like 3 tables. The selection of merchandise was awful - I had wanted to get 9 of the new finecast Necron characters, since I could open them in the store and look at them; an opportunity I never have... and they only had a single one of the ones I wanted in stock (and they had just come out!). I dragged my wife in there because I had been talking about how amazing the store was for around 2 years, and she looked at me like I was smoking crack and went back to the car.

I wound up buying a single paint brush from the guy who was working there. I asked about the other stuff, and he had no real idea; he intimated to me that he had only been working there about a week.

The whole experience was incredibly depressing. I think back on that place with sorrow.

The old bunker was really awesome, then somebody higher up decided to muck things over and move everything next door. They still have the old location ajoined by a shared door inside the store but they simply use it as an oversized stock room which boggles my mind as they always seem to be out of stock on about 30% of stuff. Now their stock is tracked by hey we sold x number of models so we order only x or fewer which leaves gaps. There used to be a time when the store was treated as a flagship location and they had at least one of everything in stock and usually much more.

They have brought back display cases and there's at least one of every army on display there, the front of the store has store armies while the gaming room has lots of customer armies on display. Its sad that they no longer have the old tables and everything is ROBB but the finished terrain is slowly improving. They are supporting a Mordheim League and will be running Necromunda in another month, but the difficulty of course comes from the fact that specialist has been completely axed from the GW line and there's no way to get gangs outside of kit bashing or hunting ebay both of which are time and resource intensive.

It used to be that there were 80-100 people there on any given weekend and nowdays on a busy day you see maybe half of that, Sundays are lucky to see even 15-20 people where that was typical even on a weeknight. The current manager has been working to try and rebuild that but there's only so much he can do as the higher ups in thr company are dead set on self destructing their sales base. I see what has been happening with attendence at the store as a direct reflection of how GW's policies are negatively impacting their market. They've gotten too big and too disconnected with the customer base and it's showing.

The purpose of the bunkers is to serve as a recruiting base and a promotional center. Those locatiosn are basically GW's only way of advertising to the public and bringing new players into the game. Once those locations close its very unlikely that the game will continue for long in those areas. People will continue to play at home or in a few clubs but those typically aren't bringing ne players into the GW fold.

Once GW completely shrinks to one man stores there's nowhere else for them to cut costs. They'll need to start closing stores and shifting to more on an online presence if they want to survive which is not something that will bode well for the company. Over the past 10 years they've burned bridges with a lot of retailers in the US trying to drive people to GW retail and now they've basically turned their backs on all that work and will end up crawling back to the LGS who haven't forgotten their mistreatement at the hands of GW. They are going to find it very hard to regain the grounds they are losing. GW has done F'ed up and people are seeking out alternatives that are far more acessible within the LGS community. I don't see them rebuilding their relationships with LGS without a lot of work. GW tried really hard to surpress the LGS stores in and around Chicago and it worked in shutting down dozens of places. The problem is now that fallout is turning out to be a double edged sword and cutting into their own market as well. They sell to fewer stores than ever and as a result they don't get the "advertising" the used to and the local community shrinks further.

Its not going to happen over night but the downwards slide has been udnerway for a while and its definately picking up steam.

overtninja wrote:
GW doesn't make much money from people playing in their stores with models they already own and buying things like paint incidentally because they wish to support their store. GW makes money when you buy models. Therefor, from a business standpoint it makes a lot of sense to reduce their stores to simple point-of-sale areas, and cease providing a place to actually play with their models.

It seems counter-intuitive, but it's probably a smart decision if you figure that once people are done buying their armies up, they are no longer really customers who can be marketed to or drummed up for additional sales unless they get the itch to start a new army.

Making things that are popular available only from direct order or GW stores is an interesting tactic, and one that will probably advantage them in the long run - if you can't get it anywhere else and it's a good model, you're going to buy it from them because you have no other choice except quit the hobby petulantly, having spent a good deal of money on it already. So long as this tactic doesn't devolve into a situation of 'the most potent models in the game are only available from us and they are really expensive', it probably won't come back to bite them.

Did GW make money directly from people playing in their stores? Maybe, maybe not. Don't have the numbers to say for sure. However, having places for people to play did help them to maintain and grow their marketshare. Essentially, by eliminating their control of what models are used during games they have opened the door for alternate model and bits manufacturers. The way I see it, by rebranding themselves as just model makers, they have invited the droves of competition that now keeps their lawyers so busy.

IMO, GW used to operate the way Google is trying to now. Google is attempting, in some markets, to supply cheap (sometimes free) internet access because they know that when people use the internet they often use Google products. So they make money by creating demand for their product.
GW used to supply gamers with places to play, and in order to play they would buy GW products (and what did they play? GW games). Now GW doesn't want gamers to be at their stores, and we as gamers, go then to FLGSs. FLGSs stock other games too, and they don't really care if we exclusively use GW products to play GW either. So now people like me are playing other games and/or playing GW games supplemented with non-GW models. way to go GW.

Also, who do you know that is truly 'done buying their armies up'? My armies are never 'done'

overtninja wrote:
if you can't get it anywhere else and it's a good model, you're going to buy it from them because you have no other choice except quit the hobby petulantly,

Not buying a single model because it's too expensive/otherwise problematic to acquire does not equal quitting the hobby, either petulantly or not. Case in point - I can only currently buy Epic Reaver titans on Ebay, and they keep going for more than I'm willing to pay. Does that mean I'm quitting the wargaming hobby? No. Does it even mean I'm quitting playing Epic? No.

Maybe they have realized that seeing a full sized game will do more harm than good because people will see a real life example of how many models and how much money GW expects you to spend in order to play their games. The small demo armies being the only thing in the store may give their games an illusion of accessibility that sucks people in.

Could all this be caused by their biggest holder "The Nomad Investment Partnership L.P." dumping shares and going from 17% (Jan 18th 2013) to 10% (July 5th 2013) voting rights all in the span of this year?

Fun stuff this...

 MetalOxide wrote:
My local GW stopped Thursday veteran nights ages ago. Since then I found a cool local-ish gaming club, bought and learnt to play alternative games such as Dust Tactics and now currently learning how to play 2nd edition 40k. I thank GW for shooting themselves in the foot, if they hadn't I wouldn't of found out about all of the awesome games outside of the current edition of 40k and fantasy.

Hey, maybe this is the master plan. I bet GW didn't want your business in the first place, and losing you as a customer opens up more space in the store for new customers to buy more space marines.

overtninja wrote:

It seems counter-intuitive, but it's probably a smart decision if you figure that once people are done buying their armies up, they are no longer really customers who can be marketed to or drummed up for additional sales unless they get the itch to start a new army.

That ignores the soft benefits of fostering an instore gaming community; a captive audience, 'flavour of the month units/armies', limited visability of competetors products, and I'm sure that there are more.

Of course if you are only interested in making money in the short term, or you are certain that you have sufficently high customer turnover, then the soft benefits are meaningless.

I did the lion's share of my gaming in a GW shop for nearly a decade and in the process I spent a huge quantity of cash. If I had ventured out into the local clubs I would have started historicals a lot sooner (as well as Warzone when it was first released) and I would have spent my wargaming budget elsewhere. This is exactly what will be happening now.

Exactly, gaming in store provides a host of long term and indirect benefits, one the biggest being vendor lock-in and the hiding of competition. If people can hobby in GW stores, they'll use GW stuff. If they go to independents or independent clubs they'll be exposed to 3rd party stuff, have no requirement to use all GW stuff (indies won't have GW-only policies), and be tempted by those games that cost less than a single tank (that's how we've gotten into X-Wing).

In the short term it makes sense, because if you're only catering to people who've already bought in and want to cash in on them before they move on, you don't need to do anything to retain them. But it'll hurt in the long term as you're losing more customers to competition and bringing less in due to the network effect. It certainly fits with everything else they are doing at the moment.

It all seems like a catch 22 that has been covered in other forums:

We have invested so much in the GW hobby that when we see short term business practices we get concerned.
We do not want to validate polices we do not like so we throttle back our purchases BUT we do not want them to take such a downturn that our "investment" is at risk.
It really looks like the more shortfalls they experience, the more they are willing to cannibalize their infrastructure.

As has been stated before: controlling the gaming environment (or at least purchasing) is good for them.
I have been tempted away with inexpensive well done products like X-wing and Robotech Tactics as have others due to their lack of involvement.
I feel I NEED to diversify my hobby because they look like they plan on not being around long term.

Their flagship magazine WD (as well as other publications) you can see greater use of digital touch-ups, copy and pasting squads/regiments and the publishing team doing a lot of the hobby work: you hear nothing of the heavy metal group and spot information on the model makers. Things just appear very tight with very little extra to the company.

There seems to be no-one in the development team that has some passion and character except one person remaining of the old crew and he is sounding more nostalgia based than innovative. An organization quickly reflects it's management and by that rule of thumb: they do not factor in the love of the game much.

 Talizvar wrote:
We do not want to validate polices we do not like so we throttle back our purchases BUT we do not want them to take such a downturn that our "investment" is at risk.

A lot of us have/are planning on jumping ship or minimising losses. For instance, I've sold off most of the GW stuff I've no immediate use for, because I can see it plummeting in desirability at some point and figured I'd get rid of it whilst there's still plenty of demand. There will always be some demand for the more obscure stuff though and people will continue to play WH/40K even if GW support stops.

You really should give X-Wing a go; it'll take about 5 mins for someone to explain the game to you and you'll get a lot of challenging gaming out of the starter set (£30. A Lemun Russ Battle Tank is £31). It's pre-painted too so there's zero time investment required.

 weeble1000 wrote:

Great news. Great!

Not "good".

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 weeble1000 wrote:

Great news. Great!

Not "good".

Oh man! Did I get my meme wrong? How embarrassing. I thought it was good news. I will have to correct that. It's all in layers. Staring at Merrett's face for hours whilst I Obama-ized it must have mushed my brain.

How's This:

Orktavius wrote:
Depends on how much money your losing, I don't think Westminster California is likely to be the cheapest area to rent a few thousand feet of retail space for the sake of gaming.

It was also just a crappy place to put a bunker, GW has a very nasty habit of putting stores in stupid places (or to kill of existing independents) and leaving lots of other areas that would work very well with no game stores.

 Talizvar wrote:
Could all this be caused by their biggest holder "The Nomad Investment Partnership L.P." dumping shares and going from 17% (Jan 18th 2013) to 10% (July 5th 2013) voting rights all in the span of this year?

Fun stuff this...

Secondary markets do not directly affect the company. It indicates that the firm is going elsewhere for any number of reasons (they feel like they could get better returns elsewhere, they feel like that part of the market is risky, or anything else really).

Of course, the share price has also gone up over the years which is good for them in share issues to generate capital for new projects.

overtninja wrote:
GW doesn't make much money from people playing in their stores with models they already own and buying things like paint incidentally because they wish to support their store. GW makes money when you buy models. Therefor, from a business standpoint it makes a lot of sense to reduce their stores to simple point-of-sale areas, and cease providing a place to actually play with their models.

Same could be said for MTG yet wizards hosts a lot of events world wide.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
How sad. DO you mean they don't let you play even if you phone up to arrange something?

AS mentioned, we've been in Cambridge, Truro, Hull, Bluewater since April and they all have games, we couldn't get a slot in Lincoln but I've since been told there's still gaming there.

lincoln is a tiny store through ( my old one) and you will struggle to get a game as they barely have any space, 2 4x4 is the most they have which includes having all the intro games set up.

Also if you go to lincoln there is no point going to the GW when on a Thursday night you can go to Gobstyks, ( one of the oldest and founder members of the GCN) which is proberbly one of the best gaming clubs in the UK.

cammy wrote:

lincoln is a tiny store through ( my old one) and you will struggle to get a game as they barely have any space, 2 4x4 is the most they have which includes having all the intro games set up.

Also if you go to lincoln there is no point going to the GW when on a Thursday night you can go to Gobstyks, ( one of the oldest and founder members of the GCN) which is proberbly one of the best gaming clubs in the UK.

Sure - we're in London and Dark Sphere is probably the store we play most often. My point was mainly that the much-touted banning of all games at all GW stores hasn't happened, and that the majority of the UK stores still have gaming, even if some of them aren't the best local option.